SuperTekBoy

So what exactly is that title all about?

Aren’t DAGs a good thing?

Why would I ever want to decommission them?

Well, yes. You are correct. They are a good thing. And I always recommend putting them in place.

This article is for the organization that has migrated to Exchange 2013. It assumes you have successfully moved all user, shared & resource mailboxes. That you have migrated and removed all Public Folder content. That you are ready to delete your 2010 DAG.

So, what’s first?

Verify databases are empty

Before we can delete a database we need to check that no objects are homed to 2010 anymore. The easiest way to do this is PowerShell.

One of the most frequent questions I receive concerns namespace design.

I covered this recently in an article geared towards Exchange 2010. However, it quickly became apparent I needed to revisit this topic specifically for Exchange 2013. Especially with the big GUI rewrite.

So, let’s get started!

What’s in a namespace

Namespace is very important.

Not only does namespace govern services like Outlook Web App, or, ActiveSync, but it also governs items such as the distribution of the Offline Address Book, or, the Autodiscover service.

A correct namespace design is key.

That seems a little counterproductive, doesn’t it?

Isn’t the whole point of a Mail Contact to put an external address in your Global Address List?

Well, yes and no.

There are certain situations where you may not want an external contact to be generally available to your user base.

Take this scenario for example.

You are the sole IT person at your company. You contract an external company to perform network monitoring 24×7. Your devices email out alerts to a distribution list. This distribution list contains two people. Yourself and the mail contact for the monitoring company. You both get the alerts. They are your safety net when you aren’t looking.

Their email address is helpdesk@contractor.com. You also have an internal support email of helpdesk@yourcompany.com. To remove any chance that your users may pick the wrong helpdesk you decide you must hide the email of the contractor.

So, how do you hide a Mail Contact from your Global Address List?

It depends on the version of Exchange you are running.

In this article, we will explore how to do this for both Exchange 2010 and 2013. Let’s tackle the 2010 side first.